In general, when an air-conditioner of a vehicle is turned off while the vehicle is operated, bacteria are propagated in an evaporator due to moisture that remains in the evaporator, and as a result, mold and bacteria that are parasitized in the evaporator are discharged along with air at the time of turning on the air-conditioner. Thus, mold and bacteria may be absorbed by respiratory organs of a driver and a passenger and cause unpleasant smell.
As related art for removing odor from an air-conditioner, Korean Patent Unexamined Publication No. 10-2005-103830 (hereinafter, ‘Document 1’) is provided.
Document 1 discloses a method for removing smell of an air-conditioner which can remove moisture of an evaporator by further actuating a blow fan even after stopping while operating the air-conditioner in order to dry and remove the moisture of the evaporator.
Similarly, Korean Patent Registration No. 10-726225 (hereinafter, ‘Document 2’) discloses a smell removing method of an air conditioner for a car which can dry moisture that remains in an evaporator by actuating a blow fan.
However, the schemes presented in Documents 1 and 2 are less effect to remove the moisture of the evaporator by actuating the blow fan, since the fan continuously rotates even after the air conditioner stops, and as a result, a misrecognition problem as malfunction and deterioration of fuel efficiency may occur. Therefore, Documents 1 and 2 cannot be a fundamental countermeasure for removing the odor of the air-conditioner.
Meanwhile, as the life-span of a vehicle, a kind of bio film layer is formed while microorganisms causing the odor are adsorbed on the surface of the evaporator simultaneously when components of an air-conditioner system is decrepit and it is known that the microorganisms forming the bio film layer causes the odor.
Therefore, in recent years, technology has been developed to remove the odor form the air-conditioner by using the microorganism causing the odor from the air-conditioner and by using microorganisms not causing the odor.
However, there is a problem that an evaporator core mounted on the vehicle will be acceleratively worn out to the level of a used car (approximately 3 years or more) for an experiment for fundamentally removing the odor from the air-conditioner by using the microorganisms.
By considering that there is a tendency in which a R&D period of a new car which is newly released is shortened and design components applied for each new car are continuously changed, technology that can reproduce the odor of the air-conditioner within a short time is particularly required.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.